NASA To Crash ‘Ebb and Flow’ Probes Into The Moon

By Gene Ryan Briones on 12/13/2012 19:12 PST

In what appears to be a worthy resting place for NASA’s probes, the space agency is announcing today that it will smash Ebb and Flow – NASA’s two tiny probes – into the Moon. NASA says that the probes will end their controlled descent on a mountain near the Moon’s north pole at about 22:28 GMT. The probes are expected to crash at a speed of 3,760 miles per hour (1.7 kilometers per second).

Apparently the probes are running too low on fuel, forcing NASA to cut their journey short. Ebb and Flow, which started flying around the Moon since January this year, produced the highest resolution gravity map gathered from a celestial body. This will enable NASA to better understand how Earth and other rocky planets form and evolve. “We’re not expecting a big David Lehman, the Project Manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Their fuel tank will be empty and they are the size of a washing machine.”